Nothing But The Stabby Stuff: Supply And Morale In A Pre-Industrial Fantasy World
Other map & menu games adopted the idea of gameplay directly on the map, Axioms was born from it, molded by it, defined by it.
Introduction
Axioms is the rare map game that actually has a serious building, item, and resource system. No abstract purchase of buildings with gold. No truly “global” resources or capacities. You need to have men and materials in a province to build or craft there or you need to move those things to that place. Infrastructure exists on a per province basis. Logistics is king.
The resource/material/item/building system in Axioms draws heavily from PVE MMORPGs and city builders in a unique synthesis. You can read two very relevant posts about these issues in the links below:
However these posts are foundational posts that help to contextualize a more integrated and far reaching set of systems. Units within Armies are represented as distinct Populations with Equipment, Food, Fodder, and Firewood on top as well as potentially a Character as a leader. An Army is composed of multiple Units which cooperate to achive a goal. Units have a Supply Train which can contain personal as well as army wide supplies and the Army can also have a distinct supply train.
Supply is what allows Units and Armies to survive as distinct Populations but also to operate in different configurations. It also directly effects the moral and cohesion of the Army or Unit. Because Units are Populations they have Happiness that is impacted by all the normal factors and then they have unique factors related to being military units. Being well fed, having enough sleep, possessing effective physical conditioning, and so forth.
General Military Logistics
As noted in one of the linked articles there are 3 core parts of supply which are related to keeping Units fed, mobile, and well rested. Food, Fodder, and Firewood are the core backbone of a pre-industrial army. Axioms also represents Equipment, Carts and Wagons, actual beasts of burden and military animals and sometimes food animals within an army on the march.
Axioms also has a relatively detailed representation of travel infrastructure. Roads, bridges, waystations, supply caches, and distinct but related things like signal towers or courier posts. Some militaries can build at least semi-permanent infrastructure themselves like wood forts, some level of bridges, and field artillery.
Axioms is a game that runs in 10 day “weekly” turns in a 40 week year. I really weighed different turns lengths for different costs and benefits before arriving here. Axioms has no tactical battles but something more like an AI simulation based on the two opposing forces and then a combat log. Military forces typically engage in some amount of maneuver and harassment over 1-5 turns as one side tries to force a favorable battle. Sometimes 2 or more armies in a single province won’t see each other or will fail to engage in a fight. Smaller raiding forces can coexist with larger field armies for many, many turns in a province without engaging in a pitched battle.
Armies need to contain enough supplies to support themselves or be supported by external supply to function. Something like dodging a pitched battle until the enemy runs low or out of supply is a real tactic. Raiding behind the lines is another option. The time it takes to travel across provinces can be boosted or slowed by supply, infrastructure, or enemy friction. Local fodder and sometimes food is a core issue whether in your own or in enemy territory.
I considered whether to break down administrative provinces into sub-divisions for military purposes but that will have to wait for a major military expansion. My original and still current goal is 2-3 major expansions and potentially a sequel if the game does pretty well.
I’ve cut a lot of potential features, like multiple worlds/realms/planes or underwater societies and such for the sequel and then more minor but still significant stuff for an expansion in order to combat feature creep. You always want to add more but you have to be realistic about your time and finances and you don’t want to burn out.
Raiding And Supply Harassment
Axioms is design specifically to avoid doomstacking whenever possible. Logistics provides a partial key to this puzzle but so does time. Smaller faster forces with smaller trains or with mostly local supply or with all horse units or special infantry, plus later magic, airships, and river travel are all useful tools for an entity that doesn’t want to fight a single decisive pitched battle. Importantly these forces are weaker to militia defenses or other informal militaries should the local populace get upset enough. They also can’t really hold territory.
A key aspect of Axioms is that there’s no really formal “province ownership”. There’s political claims and control over major infrastructure but raiding or rebel forces need to actually be located and cornered. A specific example is that forces under a certain scale when you don’t have advanced communication and information/observation networks won’t be visible on the map. You’ll get reports a of them a turn or two later and only if they do something easily noticeable. In a potential military expansion there might be a more advanced “fog of information” system in far flung areas but I want to avoid complex programming struggles for now.
Because most large forces will take 2-4 turns to actually move through a province there is some flexibility for when you can visually see them without specific efforts. Smaller units will be able to travel relatively incognito, at least until they engage in some significant action or if you have good control over areas. Most societies would at least watch key roads and bridges which limits the true speed of these units unless they accept being seen.
Small fast units can cause havoc behind front lines by impacting the ability to move resupply without meaningful military protection. I’m still working through a more detailed post on raids and banditry but they use these same mechanics. Part of the, purely map visualization based, “control/unity” mode is the effort and ability to provide various administrative infrastructure like guard posts, lookouts, traveling messengers and so forth. And of course magical options.
Morale And Cohesion
Axioms possesses a sort of Unit-level morale and cohesion model that engages with supply and training. Many games use unit-type or national “morale” systems. Not acceptable. Ideology, Race, Nation, and other Character/Population data combines with Training, Laws, and other factors to create a sort of “base morale” on a per Unit basis. Remember that Units are primarily a Population-plus data class in the code. On top of this we layer Equipment and Supply. Supply especially is key.
Hungry units, cold units, units without basic commidities and services/amenities, and other issues possess lower morale. Units with larger base Population counts and who work with Units of Populations they dislike will be unhappy and have lower cohesion. The cohesion of the whole Army layers on top of that. Units with foreign commanders, with commanders who have highly unequal access to suppplies and resources, Populationswho are not well thought of by the general socieity, and so forth all impact this cohesion.
Units integrated into their society, under respected, culturally similar, and well like officers and with access to sufficient supplies and with less disparity between the ranks and the officers will be much happier. Rallying to defend same race/religion troops, religous faith in success(still working on a more detailed religion post), with cultures that value military prowess and success, and so forth will be much stronger with the same numbers and gear. Even feelings about the Populations and supplies of an enemy army can have some effect. The Propaganda system can modify all these values as well if the truth is not to the satisfaction of the warleaders and upper social/political classes.
There are some limitations because as modern people we understand more easily and deeply what makes an effective fighting force, whereas in history leaders didn’t always know what to do. I’m sure someone will write a guide for the optimal ways to build militaries based on various game conditions. However in Axioms you have to put in the work to actually make these changes. You can’t just hit a button and magically gain morale. Your society will need to be structured properly for specific strategies and your Populations and Characters will have opinions about any potential reforms based on their Ideology and personal interests.
Conclusion
I’ve talked about this on Twitter but I really wanted to represent Roman military reforms and also specifically the life of Philip, father of Alexander, on a character level and a societal level as far as military reforms and also the depth of the character simulation.
I also wanted to have a meaningful raiding and supply harassment system and meaningful logistics generally. You absolute cannot walk a pre-industrial army across half the world and keep it in top form because an arbitrary manpower variable is not at 0 yet.
I’ve read quite a lot of academic military studies books on specific historical societies to try to get a half-decent generalizable system that represents the limits of “blobbing” as it is known to strategy players. Of course Axioms contains both role playing elements, social sim elements, and economic/politics sim elements, integrated into the strategy layer so it perhaps can’t be easily compared to classic strategy games, whether the so called grand strategy, 4X strategy, and so forth.